Brahms: Symphony No.2 - Budapest Festival Orchestra/Ivan Fischer

Classic FM Drive Featured Album, 29 December 2014 - 2 January 2015.

Ivan Fischer’s 2009 recording of Brahms's Symphony No.1 received rapturous reviews. Now the conductor takes his Budapest Festival Orchestra through the altogether more optimistic second symphony - but adds the Tragic Overture and the Academic Festival Overture to the mix which brings solemnity and grandeur, and some degree of humour to the proceedings.

Fischer says he has found a "remarkable, transparent purity" in the symphony and that lightness of touch is certainly conveyed in this reading. It is, in short, a delightful, uplifting version of a great classic.